- Trump imposes 25% tariffs on American buyers of Brazilian goods
Source: Axios
“The Trump administration said Wednesday it will impose an additional 25% tariff on [American buyers of] many Brazilian goods, escalating a trade fight it says is rooted in Brazil’s treatment of U.S. companies. The new policy includes exemptions for key consumer staples like coffee and beef, suggesting the White House is trying to minimize the inflationary impact on American shoppers even as it steps up pressure on Brazil over disputes involving U.S. tech firms, ethanol and more. A senior administration official says the tariffs are in response to Brazil’s unfair barriers against U.S. technology and payment companies.” (07/16/26)
- Two North Dakota families sue hospital over allegations babies were switched at birth
Source: New York Post
“Two families are suing a North Dakota hospital, alleging hospital staff mistakenly switched two baby boys at birth more than 36 years ago. Kyle Bylin and Jeremy Morrison were the only two babies born at Unity Medical Center in Grafton, North Dakota, on Jan. 26, 1988, the men and their families said in the lawsuit, according to KVLY. Christian Unity Hospital Corporation, doing business as Unity Medical Center, was named as the defendant. The plaintiffs allege hospital staff switched the infants and sent them home with the other child’s biological parents, the outlet reported. The two men were then raised by each other’s biological families, allegedly without anyone’s knowledge. The lawsuit says the switch was not discovered for more than 36 years.” (07/16/26)
- Ukraine: Protesters Rally in Kyiv as Zelenskyy Moves to Oust Defense Minister
Source: US News & World Report
“Protesters gathered in downtown Kyiv on Thursday after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy moved to dismiss his defense minister as parliament convened to appoint a new prime minister as part of a major government reshuffle. The shake-up could become a test of Zelenskyy’s political authority as Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches 4½ years. Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, whose technological expertise is credited in part with a significant improvement in Ukraine’s military performance in recent months against Russia’s bigger army, was expected to leave the government after just six months in the post. Before he became defense minister last January, 35-year-old Fedorov was the head of Ukraine’s digital transformation policies and seen as a modernizer. He won public popularity by spearheading Ukraine’s speedy development and deployment of drone technology and introducing several successful e-government platforms.” (07/16/26)
- UK: Regime nationalizes British steel
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“British Steel has been taken into public ownership in what the government said was a bid to ‘protect UK steelmaking’. The future of the steelworks, which employs roughly 2,700 people in Scunthorpe and supports many other industries in north Lincolnshire, has been dogged by uncertainty over recent years. ‘Today’s decision secures the future of steelmaking in the UK, protects skilled jobs and safeguards a vital national capability,’ Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said. The UK government took control of British Steel operations in Scunthorpe last year, though it has since remained under the ownership of the Chinese firm Jingye Group.” (07/16/26)
- Vance says Epstein had connections to US, Israeli intelligence
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“United States Vice President JD Vance says the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein had unspecified connections to Israeli intelligence. In a lengthy interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, released on Wednesday, Vance was asked about theories that Epstein may have had ties to Israel’s Mossad spy agency. ‘He clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence,’ he said. The vice president also claimed that Epstein’s connections in Israel appeared to have a left-of-centre ideological bent. … During the interview, Vance also conceded that the Trump administration ‘absolutely’ mishandled the communications surrounding the Epstein files.” (07/16/26)
- The Odyssey Hullabaloo
Source: American Greatness
by Victor Davis Hanson“cclaimed British filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s (The Dark Knight, Oppenheimer) newest film, The Odyssey, opens this week in the United States. But controversy has already surrounded Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s 2,700-year-old epic poem about Odysseus’s 10-year struggle to return home after the Achaian victory in the decade-long Trojan War. Some of the film’s actresses have suggested that Nolan is offering a more feminist—and long-overdue—take on the ancient poem. Actress Lupita Nyong’o, in particular, has criticized Homer’s purported sexism. Perhaps her misreading of Homer stems from her admission that, despite receiving degrees from elite Hampshire College and Yale, the 42-year-old actress had never even read the Odyssey until she was cast in the minor dual roles of Helen and her sister Clytemnestra.” (07/16/26)
- How the American Republic Became a Managerial State
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Bruce Pardy“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The United States was the land of the free. Limited government. Checks and balances. Separation of powers. The Bill of Rights. But America has instead become a managed society. Its government dominates the lives of its people. How did it go wrong? Lots of bad steps helped to transform the American republic into a managerial state. Here are eleven of the moments that sent the ship off course.” (07/16/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/how-the-american-republic-became-a-managerial-state/
- A Crisis in the Humanities
Source: Quillette
by Paul Boghossian“The norms governing scholarship now often serve to protect a rigid orthodoxy on certain politically charged issues—with ideological tests substituted for proper academic standards.” (07/16/26)
https://quillette.com/2026/07/16/a-crisis-in-the-humanities/
- ICE Is Trump’s Standing Army Now
Source: Persuasion
by Luke Hallam“One of the greatest worries for the Founding Fathers was the specter of ‘standing armies’—a permanent, professional military under the direct control of the president. … Two and a half centuries later, with permanent armies and police forces very much the norm, we view such statements as a relic of the 18th century no longer applicable to the modern world. Yet the Founding Fathers were right to draw a connection between standing armies and liberty—and in this case, Madison’s comment about an ‘overgrown Executive’ is prophetic.” (07/16/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/ice-is-trumps-standing-army-now
- Who’s to Blame? Ask the Far Right—They Have a List.
Source: The Bulwark
by Matt McManus“For all its claims to represent the interests of the People, the far right sure doesn’t appear to like a lot of them. The movement’s list of enemies is so capacious it would put Richard Nixon’s to shame. Some days, it seems as though it encompasses most of the human race. You might wonder how to square this with the right’s commitment to tradition and order. How can a society be justly ordered if it has been set up to exclude most people? The answer is that much of the far right’s social vision is fundamentally volkisch: Homogeneity and unity are goals that override democratic inclusion, and this is where the movement’s resentful agonism comes from. ‘Resentful’ is a key term here: Anyone who has read or listened to the movement’s leading figures is familiar with the tone of endless aggrievement.” (07/16/26)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/whos-to-blame-ask-the-far-right-they-have-list
- Send Trump a message that the ICE killings have consequences
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jackie Calmes“There are plenteous reasons not to confirm [US attorney general nominee Todd] Blanche, as I’ve written. He’s the man behind the Epstein files cover-up, vindictive prosecutions of Trump enemies and Trump’s $10-billion lawsuit against the IRS, litigation that was purportedly ‘settled’ in exchange for a $1.8-billion slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters and tax immunity for the Trump family. This week a federal judge skewered that suit as having been filed for ‘improper purpose’: the president’s self-dealing.
On top of that sorry record, Blanche is the architect of Trump’s ICE impunity. … Conventional wisdom says that Republicans won’t vote against a man so close to Trump. But that’s exactly why Blanche should not lead the Justice Department. The people’s representatives in the Senate could see that he doesn’t.” (07/16/26) - Why true crime isn’t real
Source: Unherd
by Kat Rosenfield“As a writer of murder mysteries, I often joke that making these stories believable requires making them profoundly unrealistic — simply because actual crimes and the investigation thereof have a way of being offensively uninspired. Readers want complex murder plots, twisted motives, a tough and passionate detective in dogged pursuit of a killer who is as brilliant as he is depraved. They do not want acts of impulsive violence committed by a guy with a room temperature IQ, one whose misdeeds are the product not of months of detail-oriented planning and plotting, but a single inauspicious moment in which he had a) a really bad idea and b) access to a gun. We think we want true stories; we don’t. We want good stories that just happen also to be true.” (07/16/26)
- Ten things a president can’t do: Trump has tried them anyway
Source: Informed Comment
by Jerry Elsea“The Founders knew the untamed frontier abounded with bullies. They also knew about felons and cheats. But you can bet they never imagined a devious, half-literate bully/lawbreaker/cheat could be elected president — not just once, but a second time (with a large plurality of voters approving) following a criminal conviction. … Still, the Founders apparently thought, any miscreant in office would be bound by constitutional restrictions. Here, from several sources, are the 10 things a president cannot do while in office. Trump has played hob with all of them.” (07/16/26)
https://www.juancole.com/2026/07/things-president-anyway.html
- Drain the Swamp, Don’t Recycle the Water for Our Side
Source: The Erick Erickson Show
by Erick-Woods Erickson“Here is the point that gets lost in the partisan scorekeeping. It does not matter whether each arrangement is technically legal. The swamp was never a legal problem; it was a trust problem. When the party that promised to end influence-peddling instead perfects it — when access to the president can be bought with a memecoin and a black-tie ticket — the lesson every ambitious operator learns is that the spoils go to whoever holds power, and restraint is for suckers. That is the real cost.” (07/16/26)
https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/drain-the-swamp-dont-recycle-the
- Trump’s Speech on Thursday Will Relitigate the 2020 Presidential Election, and No One Should Fall for It
Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye“You don’t have to like the outcome of the election to accept the fact that Trump won in 2016 and lost in 2020. What this address to the nation appears to be about is sowing more division and casting more doubt on elections in the United States. Trump can’t accept that his approval rating is underwater because a) he’s not focusing on key economic issues that Americans care about, b) he started a war with Iran that drove up oil and gas prices, and c) he seems to be more concerned about vanity projects in the District of Columbia than anything else.” (07/16/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/trumps-speech-on-thursday-will-relitigate
- No, Congress Can’t Just Overrule the Supreme Court on Birthright Citizenship
Source: Reason
by Damon Root“President Donald Trump failed in his efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court into upholding his executive order on birthright citizenship, which would have stripped that constitutional guarantee from millions of babies born on U.S. soil. Now a Republican lawmaker is hoping to effectively overrule that Supreme Court decision with a proposed bill that would resurrect Trump’s unlawful order and place it in the federal statute books. As The Hill reports, ‘Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks on Monday introduced a bill that would codify President Trump’s Day 1 executive order reshaping the definition of birthright citizenship in the U.S.’ There’s just one problem with Banks'[s] scheme: Trump lost the birthright citizenship case Trump v. Barbara on constitutional grounds, which means that any federal law repeating Trump’s already rejected position would be equally unconstitutional under the very Supreme Court precedent that Banks is now hoping to evade.” (07/16/26)
- Bring the Troops Home, Mr. President
Source: The American Conservative
by Anthony J Constantini“Some have also argued that America’s presence in Europe allows for power projection into the Middle East. Leaving aside the question of whether facilitating our involvement in that region’s interminable conflicts is itself desirable, the recent kerfuffle with Italy over the use of our bases for Operation Epic Fury suggests that even this is not guaranteed. By appearing to condition U.S. commitments on European defense spending, Trump is ultimately giving our allies a measure of control over our foreign policy. They themselves recognize this: during the summit, one NATO diplomat said NATO leaders increasingly viewed Trump as ‘the boy who cried wolf.’ Indeed, the playbook for future NATO summits—if the alliance keeps up the practice—has already been written.” (07/16/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/bring-the-troops-home-mr-president/
- Philip Freneau: The Poet We Need Right Now
Source: Liberalism.org
“A new nation needs many things. A way of ordering its political life. A way of protecting itself. A way of sustaining its population. But a nation also needs something far less practical. It needs a story to tell itself about itself. These kinds of origin stories have often been told in the form of poetry. … One of the most prolific—but now most forgotten—poetic mythmakers was the editor of Philadelphia’s National Gazette, friend of James Madison, critic of the Federalists, sea captain, and abolitionist Philip Freneau (1752–1832). One could pull nearly any poem from his list of works and find something interesting to say about American identity and the revolutionary era.” (07/15/26)
https://www.liberalism.org/p/philip-freneau-the-poet-we-need-right-now
- Laying Waste to Abusive Government Fraud
Source: Independent Institute
by Robert E Wright“The Department of Justice recently charged 455 defendants with $6.5 billion in healthcare fraud, one of a spate of recent revelations of fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA) tied to government programs. The insight of Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker, the experience of America’s Framers, and the wisdom of an ancient guru from India reveal that the route forward entails a combination of tighter auditing and greater punishment. People, even the most virtuous ones, drawn to public service, respond to incentives. Good governance recognizes that universal truth and deliberately constructs incentive systems designed to catch and punish wrongdoers. The mere establishment of well-designed incentive systems stops most FWA in its tracks by creating an expectation that crime will not pay.” (07/15/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/15/abusive-government-fraud/
- Shoring up US data integrity and credibility
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by the Monitor’s Editorial Board“Individual and institutional confidence in the credibility of official data from the United States, the world’s largest economy, is the grease that helps keep the engines of global productivity and commerce humming. And, as with most engines, a timely tuneup helps ensure smooth and predictable functioning, avoiding hiccups or holdups.” (07/15/26)
- How Obama fits into Democratic centrists’ comeback plot
Source: Semafor
by David Weigel“Last month, after Abdul El-Sayed and I wrapped up our interview in the Detroit suburbs, I mentioned the ongoing effort by centrist Democrats to link him to Graham Platner. The candidate laughed. El-Sayed rose on his strength during short TV hits, where he would talk about his issues — ‘Medicare for All,’ no more wars — and the interviewer would ask about newsy topics like Platner, who used some of the same consultants as him. El-Sayed liked to joke that he was already running for Senate as a Muslim with the middle name Muhammad, ‘and now I have to carry that guy?’ If centrists have their way: Yes, he does.” (07/15/26)
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/15/2026/how-obama-fits-into-democratic-centrists-comeback-plot
- Bet on Rigging the Games
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“Casinos compete with online prediction markets. One way to compete is just to compete. If some of your casino customers are drifting to online betting, find ways to make the in-person experience more appealing. Improve advertising. Jigger the odds ever-so-slightly more in favor of players. Increase the dollar value of wins. Etc. We might call this the economic means of competition. The other way to compete? Deploy the political means: cajole government to bludgeon competitors. Thus the American Gaming Association, which represents casinos, would like the federal government to do something to impede online prediction markets — the trading of contracts about what’s going to happen in sports and otherwise on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.” (07/15/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/07/15/bet-on-rigging-the-games/
- If Lie Detectors Worked
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman“My novel Salamander is a fantasy in which some mages are truthtellers. I did not put as much thought as I should have into the question of how a society would be different if it was possible to tell when someone was (subjectively) lying, a question relevant to fictional worlds but also to possible futures. A better understanding of how the mind works might produce a real lie detector, one that reliably reported whether a speaker believed that what he said was true. What effects would it have on our society, assuming the lie detector was inexpensive and available to almost everyone?” (07/15/26)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/if-lie-detectors-worked
- OMB’s New Proposed Rule Will Turn Federal Grants Personalist and Partisan
Source: Liberal Currents
by Chuck Babbage“At the end of May, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) put forward a proposal for rules governing federal financial assistance, which includes almost all grant making in the United States including scientific research. OMB, which is run by the conservative machinator Russell Vought, has been a nexus of major Trump demolition jobs, including the immediate impoundment of scientific grants when Trump retook office in 2025. So scientific research in the United States was already on the run before this latest proposal. The Trump administration hates America’s research institutions.” (07/15/26)
- Can Dems harness Iran war anger to sink Trump’s military budget?
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Blaise Malley“Congress returned to Washington DC this week after its July 4 recess. With President Donald Trump having recently declared the memorandum of understanding with Iran ‘over’ and with the two countries exchanging attacks, the war has predictably taken center stage. Congressional Democrats have been mostly unified against the war, but this week has presented opportunities for members to use new vehicles to express their opposition via the power of the purse. On Tuesday, every present Democratic Senator voted to block debate over the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which authorizes the appropriation of Pentagon funds. The bill, which needed 60 votes to advance, failed by a 50-46 tally.” (07/15/26)
- Did the Enlighteners Reject Aristotle?
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Winton Bates“In his book, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790, Ritchie Robertson uses the term ‘Enlighteners’ to describe the proponents of the Enlightenment. I will briefly describe Robertson’s book before explaining how my reading of it has caused me to consider the question posed above.” (07/15/26)
https://www.freedomandflourishing.com/2026/07/did-enlighteners-reject-aristotle.html
- Kharg Island, Pickaxe Mountain, and a War Congress Never Authorized
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey“As I wrote last month, Trump has led us into a path of chaos, and as I predicted, the mutual agreement lasted five minutes, and the Strait of Hormuz is still not moving trade. Both sides accuse the other of breaking the ceasefire in bad faith. This war risks dragging on longer than most Americans will tolerate.” (07/15/26)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/kharg-island-pickaxe-mountain-and
- After punishing people for Charlie Kirk comments, colleges are paying steep settlements
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Graham Piro“Violating the First Amendment will cost you. Universities and other public institutions are learning this lesson the hard way as the dust settles on a series of lawsuits brought by university faculty and staff who were punished for their comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder last September.” (07/15/26)
- Limited government: myth or future fact?
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton“There were multiple times in history when men have attempted to create and sustain limited government. We submit that this is little more than tolerating something that is inherently intolerable. Many ways have been sought and tried to limit the power of government, to prevent the rise of the all-powerful state. However, humans are perversely ingenious and are inventive when it comes to enslaving their fellows. And usually in convincing the slaves that they are still free.” (07/15/26)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/07/15/limited-government-myth-or-future-fact-2/
- A Bear-Sized Step Forward for Grizzly Recovery: Conservation Groups Celebrate Novel Solution to Incentivize Conservation
Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by staff“A coalition of sportsmen’s and other conservation organizations today celebrated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed rule for grizzly bear management, calling the bear’s recovery one of the most significant wildlife recovery achievements in the history of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Service’s proposal a model for adjusting policy as conservation progresses. The proposal recognizes the extraordinary recovery of the grizzly bear, including in the Greater Yellowstone area, where bears have grown from 136 animals in 1975 to more than 1,000 today—a success built through five decades of cooperation by states, landowners, sportsmen, and conservation groups. Under the proposed rule, states are provided a path to managing areas that exceed local recovery objectives while the grizzly remains federally listed.” (07/15/26)
- So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, 07/15/26
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
“Ada Palmer on the history of censorship from the Renaissance to AI.” (07/15/26)
- The Permanent Problem, episode 17
Source: Niskanen Center
“Liberalism’s cycles of crisis and renewal, with Adrian Wooldridge.” (07/15/26)
https://www.niskanencenter.org/liberalisms-cycles-of-crisis-and-renewal-with-adrian-wooldridge
- NPR Politics Podcast, 07/15/26
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“Trump warns that communism is coming for America.” (07/15/26)
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/15/nx-s1-5894745/trump-warns-that-communism-is-coming-for-america
- The Tom Woods Show, episode 2778
Source: The Tom Woods Show
“Trump Warming to Zelensky? The State of Russia and Ukraine
Read the original article at TomWoods.com. https://tomwoods.com/ep-2778-trump-warming-to-zelensky-the-state-of-russia-and-ukraine/.” (07/15/26)
https://tomwoods.com/ep-2778-trump-warming-to-zelensky-the-state-of-russia-and-ukraine/
- The Briefing Podcast with Michael Waldman, 07/15/26
Source: Brennan Center
“Trump Ramps Up Election Meddling (with Larry Norden and Wendy Weiser).” (07/15/26)
- Kibbe on Liberty, episode 395
Source: Free the People
“This UFC Champion Is Fighting for Freedom | Guest: Renato Moicano | Ep 395.” (07/15/26)
- The Chris Hedges Report, 07/15/26
Source: The Chris Hedges Report
“Rebuilding ‘Home’ in the 21st Century (w/ Ece Temelkuran).” (07/15/26)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/rebuilding-home-in-the-21st-century
- LPA Two Hour Lunch Hour, episode 2
Source: LP Alliance
“Join us for our anything goes podcast every Wednesday at noon eastern!” (07/15/26)
- TAC Right Now, 07/15/26
Source: The American Conservative
“Cornered Trump Threatens Huge Iran Escalation, w/ Tucker Carlson.” (07/15/26)
- Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 07/15/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Vance Says US in ‘Delicate Diplomatic Dance’ With Iran, 100 Dems Vote To Cut Israel Aid, and More.” (07/15/26)